The news coming out of Greece today has been less focused on Parliament’s passage of tough austerity measures and more on the violent actions of a small group of protesters. As The New York Times explained:

The demonstration had drawn tens of thousands of people near the central square in front of Parliament as part of a general strike that paralyzed flights, ferries, schools and hospitals. It did not initially appear different from many other, mostly peaceful protests in recent months, as the country’s financial crisis has deepened and the likelihood of painful sacrifices has grown into a certainty.

However, clustered among the protesters were subgroups numbering in the hundreds — mostly young and many clad in black, wearing hoods or masks and carrying helmets, wooden bats or hammers — that the police and other demonstrators identified broadly as anarchists.

They led efforts to storm the Parliament building, chanting “thieves, thieves,” and hurling rocks and gasoline bombs. Some chased the ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the building. The police responded with tear gas canisters that spread a choking pall over the crowd.

Perhaps that story line would sound familiar to those who’ve followed recent G20 protests or even the Copenhagen protests, where largely nonviolent actions were overshadowed by the violent work of a few black-bloc anarchists. Unfortunately, things got even worse in Greece:

In mid-afternoon, in a nearby neighborhood, a firebomb was flung into the Marfin Egnatia Bank, trapping at least 20 people. Firefighters worked to evacuate them, but the police said a man and two women stuck on the bank’s second floor died from smoke inhalation. Colleagues sobbed in the street.

These mark the first deaths during a protest in Greece since 1991 and have, as The Times put it, “shocked many in Greece, where demonstrations have been a way of life for decades and played a pivotal role in the overthrow of the military regime in 1974.”

But amidst this turmoil it’s important to remember that the demonstrations appear to have otherwise been nonviolent. The photo above shows a young protester helping a police officer back to his feet after having slipped. And other photos (not including the masked anarchists) have shown reasonable average people taking to the streets in a peaceful way.

Unfortunately, it now seems likely that the tragic deaths following this violent outburst will be used by the government to further exploit their position and push through what appears to be deeply unpopular legislation.

How does activism affect us? Some may think that people who take to the streets are by and large angry, frustrated, bitter or deeply saddened by the state of the world. Why else would they take time out of their day to make a potentially controversial political statement, knowing full well that they may take heat for doing so?

From experience, I know that can be true. Protesters are often times driven by such emotions. But anger and sadness are not necessarily bad things, especially when they’re felt in response to real injustices in the world and are channeled into activism.

An interesting piece in the Guardian looks at new research that sheds light on the upside of taking action for something you believe in:

Malte Klar and Tim Kasser started by interviewing two sets of around 350 college students, both about their degree of political engagement and their levels of happiness and optimism. Both times, they found that those most inclined to go on a demo were also the cheeriest.

So there’s a link – but can politics actually make a person happier? In the third study, the academics took a bunch of students and divided them up into groups. The first were encouraged to write to the management of the college cafeteria asking for tastier food. The next lot wrote asking the cafe to source local or Fairtrade products. They were then tested on their wellbeing, and the group who had involved themselves in the political debate were far and away the strongest on the “vitality” scale: they felt more alive and enriched than those who merely complained about the menu.

There are many fascinating aspects to this . First, the activist-students didn’t necessarily care about food ethics, but just taking action made them feel better. Second, sending a memo is hardly the most engaging political action – and yet it had a big impact on those taking it. Third, the study flies in the face of the popular wisdom that happiness resides in creature comforts and relative affluence. Perhaps activism gives people a sense of purpose, or of agency or just a chance to hang out with other people. Most likely it does all of the above.

Over at Danger Room, Noah Shachtman had a post recently poking fun of protester James Richard Sauder, who was recently arrested after scaling a fence at a nuclear missile silo.

While Sauder was apparently well intentioned, his outfit and the complicated explanation of his elaborate headdress, obviously make it very easy to dismiss him.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine who would take someone dressed that way seriously.

What really surprised me, however, was when Shachtman wrote that Sauder’s “loony symbolic protest,” paled in comparison to how crazy some of our plowshares friends are, who dressed in clown suits a few years back and broke into a nuclear base.

While I was at first disappointed to read this, maybe he has a point. Shachtman from my experience is a pretty reasonable guy. The fact that he saw the clown suits as even more “loony” than Sauder’s outfit isn’t good. Perhaps dressing as clowns isn’t the best way for plowshares activists to highlight the absurdity of war and the ease with which people can get into a nuclear facility. Figuring out which symbols everyday folks will connect to is no easy task.

As we’ve written about here before, how demonstrators present themselves matters and will seriously influence the likelihood that passers-by will be moved by a protest. By dressing normally or even in our Sunday best, and keeping our message focused and simple, I think we will have a much greater chance of reaching those who think differently.

• Protesters draped banners over the Parthenon defensive walls yesterday and stormed the Acropolis.  Today Greece holds a general strike in protest of government austerity measures. Unions are rallying and schools, hospitals, shops, and most other locations are closed.

• 15,000 kids in Kuwait skipped school during a two-day strike this week in protest of high pollution caused by oil facilities.

• Nearly 200 workers gathered at the Ministry of Labour in Dubai demanding back wages their employers withheld.

• In honor of the May 4th movement against censorship, Chinese netizens yesterday protested through an online flash mob.  People sent out messages that said “freedom of speech.”

• 500 HIV/AIDS patients rallied in New Delhi yesterday to protest the recent firing of outreach workers.

• Thousands of Christians protested in northern Iraq to condemn a recent bus bombing that left 80 wounded.

• A group of UC Berkeley students are staging a hunger strike for several demands: that the university oppose the new Arizona immigration law, drop disciplinary charges against protesters from the occupation of Wheeler Hall earlier this year, rehire laid-off janitors, and make the campus a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.

• Firefighters in Ann Arbor, Michigan picketed outside the fire station on Monday against planned layoffs.

• Members of the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota are exercising civil disobedience by fishing in non-reservation land, demonstrating their right to live off the land.

• Activists in San Francisco staged a street theater protest this weekend against American Apparel’s sexist advertising.

Amidst the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill, here’s some good news from Businessweek regarding Canada’s tar sands, which has been called the most destructive project on Earth:

Technip SA, Europe’s second-largest oil-services provider, said protests against the development of Canada’s oil sands have made it harder for energy companies to get permits to tap the deposits.“We don’t expect an oil-sands rush like the one we saw three or four years ago,” even as oil prices are sufficient to justify development, Chief Executive Officer Thierry Pilenko said today. “A number of organizations that were against development of the tar sands have organized themselves.”

Environmental groups have objected to the exploitation of Canada’s oil sands because the energy needed to extract the crude generates more greenhouse gases than conventional oil production. In September, Greenpeace forced Royal Dutch Shell Plc to suspend 155,000 barrels of daily output at a project in Alberta after protesters chained themselves to equipment.

“It will be a bit more difficult to get permitting,” Pilenko said on a conference call from Paris. Oil companies “will look very carefully at costs and resources before awarding large projects” in Canada.

While there is seemingly little socially-conscious hip-hop in the US these days, oppressed people around the world – from Palestine to Burma – are still utilizing rap to challenge the injustices they face.

The Guardian recently took a fascinating look at how this art form is being used in Burma, where the military regime censors and controls everything, as a form of nonviolent resistance.

Burma has a history of revolutionary music. Traditional protest songs, known as thangyat, were once used to air grievances, both small, against neighbours, and large, against authority. Following the 1988 student uprising, however, the music was banned outright by the ruling military junta.

But hip-hop’s fluid lyrics wrapped in rhymes and youthful argot make it a perfect modern format for subtly spreading an anti-authoritarian message.

One of the most popular and outspoken hip-hop artists is 29-year-old Thxa Soe. On his most recent album, three-quarters of the songs, with titles like “Water, Electricity, Please Come Back,” were banned.

And there are others in Burma finding an outlet for dissent in music. A group known as Generation Wave, its exact membership unknown, secretly records and distributes anti-government albums across the country, dropping them at the tea shops that are the social hubs for Burma’s underground political network.

They write songs such as Wake Up, a call for young people to join the pro-democracy movement, and Khwin Pyu Dot May (Please Excuse Me), the story of a young man asking his mother’s permission to join the struggle.

As I read this, I couldn’t help but feel sad that hip-hop has been so commercialized and co-opted by the mainstream in the US. Given the many crises we face, rap could and should serve as a powerful vehicle for dissent here as well. Unfortunately, there seems to be little new protest music – hip-hop or otherwise – that really speaks to our predicament.

As the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference was beginning just a few blocks away, activists came to New York City’s Grand Central Station this rainy morning to take a stand for real and rapid nuclear disarmament. The direct action followed a weekend of talks, workshops, and actions led by the War Resisters League. A handful of protesters were arrested by police for taking part in a die-in on the floor of the station with signs in their hands.

The action began at 8 am, at the height of the morning rush. Protesters—including those from the War Resisters League, the Catholic Worker, Veterans for Peace, the Granny Peace Brigade, and Think Outside the Bomb—marched in a circle around the information desk at the middle of the station’s Main Concourse, under the blue, constellationed ceiling overhead.

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• There were more than 100 demonstrations around the United States this weekend to protest the Arizona immigration law.  In DC, thousands of people supported 4 students who marched all the way from Florida, and high-profile activists including Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il) were arrested.  Other marches took place in Chicago, Maine, San Francisco, and Denver, as well as many other locations.

• Thousands gathered to march in Havana, Cuba on Saturday for International Workers Day, also known as May Day.

• 200,000 people demonstrated in Istanbul for May Day on Saturday to demand more secure employment and better working conditions.  It was the first approved May Day gathering in thirty years.  Other demonstrations took place in Kolkata, Jakarta, and around the world.

• Teachers picketed in the Philippines on Wednesday to demand a better insurance system.

• Separatists staged a sit-in in India on Saturday to demand the creation of a separate state of Vidarbha.

• About two hundred Socialist lawmakers and supporters began a hunger strike in Albania this weekend to demand a recount of an allegedly rigged election.

• Protests continue in Greece in the face of extreme budget cuts as the economy verges on collapse.

• Italian unions shut down opera houses this weekend to protest an emergency decree that would affect arts funding.

• On Wednesday, scrap metal dealers in Jamaica protested a government decision to shut down the trade.

• 200 people gathered in Montana to protest a pro-Nazi film screened by a white supremacist group.

• An Albuquerque woman was on day 16 of a hunger strike on Friday to raise awareness about refugees who flee violence for poverty in the U.S.